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Deal Over Claims to Rescued Torahs’ Provenances

By James Barron July 26, 2010 7:45 pmJuly 26, 2010 7:45 pm

Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe cover of a Torah given to Central Synagogue in 2008 by the Maryland group Save a Torah.

A nonprofit group from Maryland that restores Torahs has promised it will describe the provenances of its rescued Torahs only “if there is documentation or an independent verifiable witness to such history,” according to an agreement with Maryland officials.

The group, Save a Torah, restored a Torah that was donated to Central Synagogue in Manhattan in 2008. At the time, Menachem Youlus, a rabbi at the center of Save a Torah’s work, said that Torah had been saved by a Polish priest during World War II after Jewish prisoners entrusted it to him.

Questions surfaced after The New York Times published an article about that Torah in April 2008. David M. Rubenstein, a billionaire financier who had bought the Torah and donated it to Central Synagogue, on the Upper East Side, subsequently bought and donated a second Torah whose provenance was certain.

He did so after Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust historian and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Research Institute, said he could not confirm Save a Torah’s account of the first Torah that it had come from Auschwitz.

In late March, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a New York lawyer who is a vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, wrote to the Maryland attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, alleging “possible fraud and/or misrepresentation” by Save a Torah. He asked for an investigation into whether Save a Torah had been “soliciting funds under false pretenses.”

Mr. Rosensaft, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School and teaches a course on World War II war crimes trials, took issue with Rabbi Youlus’s description of the Auschwitz Torah. “There is no record of anyone even remotely fitting the description of the priest” Rabbi Youlus said had saved it, Mr. Rosensaft said in the letter.

He also took issue with a Torah that Rabbi Youlus said had been at Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne Frank died in 1945. Mr. Rosensaft’s parents met at Bergen-Belsen.

Mr. Rosensaft said that Rabbi Youlus’s description of finding a Torah beneath a wooden floor in a barracks was not possible. The original buildings at Bergen-Belsen, he said, were burned to stop a typhus epidemic and the survivors were moved to a former German military installation nearby in May 1945. Mr. Rosensaft said that he was born in that installation in 1948 and returned many times to visit.

“The brick barracks to which the survivors were moved did not have wooden floorboards,” Mr. Rosensaft said, “and they’re now a NATO base, populated by British military personnel, so there is no way Youlus could have gotten there, either.”

Under the agreement with Maryland officials, Save a Torah promised it would not provide an account of where a restored Torah had been found unless it could also provide documentation or an independent witness.

“In the absence of such independent verifiable proof,” the agreement said, “there will be no discussion of the circumstances under which the Torah was rescued.”

P. Richard Zitelman, the president of Save a Torah, signed the agreement. He did not respond to a message left at his office on Monday. Rabbi Youlus did not respond to a message left on his cellphone.

I think its fine and dandy to argue over this issue but I am more interested “if” these Rabbi’s could turn there scholarly intellects to St Augustine book “City of God”. Why? Simple. We lay people of religious followings would like to have concise explanations to what is talked in this book about “Demons” “Gods” and the city of God (Jerusalem).
Are these the “aliens or creatures of wicked doings and do they really exist and how long? “For eternity?”//www.CaptainDemocracy.wordpress.com

I work for a Jew and so my company e-mailbox is weekly crammed with these kinds of scams. “Donate a dollar for Torah Television in Israel and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a luxury apartment in Jerusalem”…”Donate a dollar and religious scholars will pray to [deceased-rabbi-of-the-month] on the occasion of his Jahrzeit for you”…”Help release jailed Jews in upstate penitentiaries”…”Donate a dollar and help Israeli orphans return to Judaism”…as an outsider, I think the insularity of the Orthodox communitites makes them particularly susceptible to these kinds of scams.

It’s highly disingenuous — and misleading — to say “Questions surfaced after The New York Times published an article … in April 2008.” In fact, questions surfaced after the Washington Post published an article this year, having done research on Save a Torah that the Times failed to do in 2008.

I agree with Kate in comment 5. Yes, questions arose after the April 2008 Times article but not because of the Times article. The Times article actually gave credence to Youlus’ claims and enhanced his reputation. James Barron missed the real story to begin with (it happens) but should not now take credit for the results of good work done by another paper.

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